How much mess can one crafter make?

In my case, an awful lot! When I was making the two pillows and the tags, I must have turned my craft room upside down somehow. I can't believe the state it is in. Especially my lace boxes. For the pillows, I needed to find exactly the right lace of course, and I searched through the drawers and boxes for hours. I love fondling my antique and vintage laces. I love studying all their intricate details, and I get so terribly carried away. Hours pass and then I find myself surrounded by piles of possibles, piles of oh so delicious but not suitable lace, and big tangles of the prettiest pieces. How did that happen?

When I tried to look for a few little pieces yesterday for another project, I realised that I needed to do something to get those lacy tangles sorted. Lightbulb moment! What about all those dolly pegs I bought ages ago for a specific project which now I can't even remember? They looked very new though, so I soaked them in coffee for a goodly while. Much better. I have only done a fraction of the laces, but it is a good start I think -



I'll have to go shopping tomorrow for a few more. The amount I would need to do all the laces, well, lets just say I'd need a rather large shopping trolley.

However, I get bored with too much of the same thing. So this is what happened next. My darling No. 3 son wanted to know what I would like for Mothering Sunday, and we wombled off into town yesterday afternoon. I knew I wanted something crafty, which he thought was rather silly, but he ended up buying me a much wanted precision craft knife ( notice the pretty pink handle! ) and a corner punch which I had coveted for a long time. Woohoo!


He wouldn't let me have them until today, and some of you will know that I am not the most patient person in the world, but this was worth waiting for. Because I had already thought of a jolly good use for the corner punch. I could use it to pretty up some plain tags and use those for winding the wider laces onto!

And thats what I did earlier today, with a big grin on my face. I have only done a few so far, but the France/Italy rugby match is sooooooooooo exciting, I have to watch, can't prettify. Here are the few I have done so far -


It really doesn't take very long to make the tags look pretty. Punch out the corner, age the tags with a couple of brown inks, add a teeny scrap of old paper, and thats it really, get winding!

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY FOR ENTERING THE GIVEAWAY. I'LL BE CLOSING IT TONIGHT AT 10PM AND DRAW THE WINNER TOMORROW MORNING. A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE ENTERED SO FAR AND GOOD LUCK!